Feb 262015
 

Another dystopia, this time with a woman – seventeen year old Noria – becoming one of the world’s only, if not first, tea masters. Water is the world’s most precious resource; created from desalination plants and completely managed by distant imperial masters in New Qian. Noria is entrusted with a deep secret, one that could save her town and, simultaneously, destroy it and her. The tone of the novel is reminiscent of silver age or new wave SF – refreshing and pleasant to read whilst uncovering the various pieces of the story, the reader always a step or two ahead of Noria.

Feb 262015
 

A set of devices that gather power from the waves stretches from the coast of India to Djibouti. A woman leaves her old life behind to walk this bridge, illegally, crossing to a new life, searching for something. In parallel, in an earlier life, a young girl escapes death or slavery in West Africa, heading east, towards Addis Ababa, to a new life. This novel shouldn’t work, it would be so easy to get wrong, but it treats its characters with respect, the author approaching it with deep honesty and humility, dealing with sexuality and violence in an ever-changing world.